Roaring

by Lindsey Duga

  Somehow I didn’t recoil at the cyclops. With a stab in my heart, she reminded me of Millie. She even looked somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t place her.

  “Here at last,” she said softly, taking a step from the elevator and onto the carpet. “I’ve been looking for you for some time.”

  I must’ve been staring too intently at her cyclops eye, because she frowned. “If you’re wondering whether or not I will go mad as well, the answer is no.”

  Something clicked in the back of my mind. Millie’s ability to read minds was unique to a cyclops’ third eye. What if this cyclops also had a unique ability with her third eye?

  Like Colt had told me more than once, my thoughts were easy to read on my face, because the cyclops answered, “My eye finds things. Specifically, powers of monsters. It’s how I was able to find you.”

  Just like Colt had suspected. Now it made sense how this Mr. Brocker had been able to track me everywhere.

  She watched me expectantly, as if waiting for some kind of reaction.

  When I gave her nothing, the cyclops woman shook her head. “You really don’t recognize me, then.”

  I blinked, confused. Was I supposed to remember her? From when? My time here when I got my pearl? But I barely remembered any of that.

  She turned on her heel, back toward the elevator, flicking her wrist toward me. “Come, I’m supposed to take you to him.”

  Unable to ask her anything, I stood and followed her into the elevator. We were silent as I watched the buttons for each floor light up, and outwardly, I tried my best to look calm.

  But I wasn’t. My breaths grew more and more shallow with each foot we climbed into the air. Higher and higher until…we stopped.

  The cyclops woman opened the elevator door and gestured that I step out. She avoided my gaze as she pulled the door closed. “He’ll be right with you.” As the elevator dropped down, the last thing I managed to catch before she disappeared was one glistening tear rolling down her perfect cheek.

  Who was that woman? Why was she crying?

  I was left alone in a long office. Almost ten yards of nothing but carpet and floor-to-ceiling windows. At the end were two large leather chairs and a massive oak desk with a winged chair that looked fit for a king. A king of industry maybe.

  Tentatively, I crossed the ocean of carpet to approach the desk and leather chairs. Between the chairs was a little end table with a glass bowl full of hard candy.

  Candy that was covered in a red cellophane wrapper.

  My breath caught.

  With trembling fingers, I reached down and picked up a piece of candy. Or what could be referred to as a throat lozenge. It crinkled in my fingertips.

  At the far end of the office, the elevator door opened and out stepped the man from St. Agnes—the one who’d sat in the sanctuary and confessed his sins to me. The man who gave me the cherry lozenge.

  He smiled. “Hello, Eris.”

  Chapter Thirty

  The Dragon

  I kept still. After all, I didn’t want to get my head blown off, and Jimmy Sawyer was a monster of his word.

  “You’ve got a lot of guts showing your ugly mug around here, Clemmons. In one of the most frequented speakeasies of the BOI?” He tsked with his forked tongue, which came out more like a hiss. “You were just asking to be caught.”

  “Very intuitive. But let’s be honest.”

  “Regarding?”

  “Not one inch of my mug is ugly.”

  The muzzle of his gun pressed tighter against the muscles in my lower back. “You trying to be funny?”

  “A little.”

  “You took out two of our own. How dare you make jokes when you’ve pulled a Benedict Arnold, you rat bastard,” he growled.

  I sighed. “Just trying to defuse the tension… I didn’t kill them, Sawyer.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You put them both in the hospital, then you eloped with the world’s most dangerous weapon.”

  “We didn’t…” I sighed again. “Listen, I have something McCarney will want to hear—”

  “I don’t give a damn what McCarney wants to hear. You’re talking to me. And I want to know why you betrayed us for a pair of big goo-goo eyes and some nice bubs.”

  At that, I whirled around, done playing Mr. Nice Guy. Grabbing the muzzle of the gun in my left hand, I pointed it down toward the floor, twisting Sawyer’s wrist in the process. With my right hand, I slid my fingers under his left sleeve and pinched at one of his scales. He winced. Tearing off a basilisk’s scales was the equivalent of pulling fingernails.

  “Don’t talk about her like that,” I growled, a tendril of steam escaping my mouth.

  Sawyer stared at me with wide eyes, then his brow furrowed. “You really are dizzy with the dame, aren’t you?”

  “And if I am?”

  “Then you’re a goddamn fool.” He jerked his arm away and tucked the gun inside his jacket. “She’s bewitched you, ole sport.”

  I shook my head. “Not in the way you think.”

  He grunted and rolled his eyes, gesturing “two fingers” to the bartender. The bartender returned with two fingers of scotch in a crystal glass. Tossing back a large gulp, Sawyer leaned forward and rested his elbows on the bar.

  “It’s exactly the way I think. No man in his right mind would betray his countrymen and his whole life for a pair of…” I glared at him, and he finished hastily, “for a pretty Jane.”

  I took off my hat and set it on the stool beside me, running my fingers through my already messy hair. “I’m not here to argue with you about whether or not Eris cast some sort of spell on me.”

  “Then what are you here for? Clearly you’re turning yourself in, but why? You couldn’t possibly be changing your mind, not when you keep on defending the little witch.”

  I gnashed my teeth together, trying to keep my anger in check. He didn’t know her like I did. In fact, I’d been like him once, too.

  “You’re right. I haven’t changed my mind. She’s still the only thing I…”

  The only thing I care about.

  The words almost slipped out so easily. The truth was I tried to think of something else that I cared about more than her, but I couldn’t think of a single thing. When I’d walked away from the BOI, I walked away from everything I’d had. I’d chosen to believe in someone who had stayed silent her whole life to ensure she never robbed anyone of their free will. Someone who stood up for women who were abused and battered.

  I’d found something in Eris that I hadn’t realized I’d been looking for…light. A window of beautiful gold light in the dark, dark netherworld I’d been drowning in for so long.

  “The only thing you what?” Sawyer asked, the glass almost to his lips as he gave me a sideways look over his shoulder.

  “Care about,” I finished. If I couldn’t say it out loud, then I didn’t deserve to think it. I needed to start being more honest, like her.

  “Jesus, Colt.” He slammed down the glass so hard I was surprised it didn’t crack. “You’ve known her for what? A stinking week? The BOI has been your life since you were twelve! McCarney practically raised you as his son—we took you in from a hellish orphanage. They gave you everything—”

  “Stop.”

  There was something in my voice that made Sawyer halt in his rant.

  “Half truths.”

  “What?” Sawyer asked.

  “I’m tired of living my life on half truths. Yes, the BOI rescued me from an orphanage. Yes, they gave me a home. But it all came at a cost.”

  “What the devil are you talking about?”

  I lowered my voice and looked into his serpent-like eyes. Pupils that were slits when he was distressed. “Do you know what I am?”

  He shrugged, gaze darting away. “Most hunters are monsters. The good ones at least. But I’ve neve
r seen any part on you. What does this have to do with—”

  “Just listen,” I cut in, my eyes keeping hold of his. “I was an experiment, Jimmy.”

  My ex-senior agent stared back at me, eyes narrowed, his fingers curling around the side of his glass. A muscle in his jaw ticked and he nodded slowly. He believed me. “What are you?”

  “Well,” I said, taking a sip of my tea, “I was a dragon.”

  “A DRAGON?”

  Half the folks in the speakeasy turned to look at us. Jimmy cleared his throat and took a drink. When they turned back to their conversations, he ducked his head and whispered, “A dragon? You’re shitting me.”

  I shook my head. “I can show you the scars on my back where they took off my wings.”

  Jimmy sucked in a breath. “Well…damn. I didn’t even know dragon wings existed.” He took a long pause, then looked back at me. “Did they do that to any other agents?”

  “I don’t think there are any other wings out there. At least not in America. Besides, I was such a failure, I don’t think they did.”

  Jimmy frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “The wings took, but I couldn’t control them. I accidentally killed five people. They removed them after that.”

  “Shit.”

  “There’s more,” I said.

  “More?” Jimmy groaned, wiping a gloved hand down the side of his face. “Why are you telling me all this, Colt?”

  It was a fair question. Jimmy Sawyer had always been a grouchy, judgmental thorn in my side, but he’d been one of the only agents who’d truly taken the time to train me. He cared about the right things. He went after evil. Honestly, I was glad he’d found me first and not anyone else.

  “Because I want you to know why I did what I did. Why I’m making her a priority instead of the people who turned me into a monster. Because I want…no, I need your help.”

  He gave me another long sideways look and then dipped his head in a gesture for me to continue.

  “There’s a reason why I’m the strongest hunter the BOI has.”

  “Yes, you’re a bloody dragon, I get it.”

  “Not just that.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at me.

  I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, studying him. I’d come this far, I had to tell him the rest of what the BOI had done to me—what I’d never even told Eris, because I hadn’t wanted to see the pain in her gaze.

  And what Gin had tried to bargain for.

  “Try staring at me, Jimmy.”

  He blinked. “What? No. I’m trying to turn you in, not kill you, you idiot.”

  “You can’t kill me. Try it.”

  “Look here, you arrogant son of a—”

  “Jimmy. Do it.”

  He hissed, rage coloring his face red at my arrogance. His pupils became full slits as a yellow substance glossed over his eyes.

  His basilisk stare. One look into his eyes and death should come to me if he held the stare long enough. My insides should shrivel and my heartrate should slow, my blood should burn and the oxygen should freeze in my lungs. My body was supposed to shut down, organ by organ.

  I didn’t even flinch.

  Jimmy blinked, his eyes clearing of their yellow glow as his gaze roamed over me. “What in the…”

  “Do you remember when McCarney had you stare through two eyeholes every week for three months?”

  Jimmy nodded, something like fear and disgust creeping into his expression.

  I took a deep breath. “I was on the other side of that wall. I stared into your eyes every week for three months and built up an immunity to a basilisk stare. It was the same with manticore poison, or a gorgon’s stare, or a kraken’s ink, or…” I shook my head. “A dozen other wounds and effects from some monster. I’m immune because I built up an immunity. It’s not my dragon genes, though I’m sure that might be how I survived it all. It’s why McCarney wanted me to go after the siren. I listened to recordings of a siren’s voice for hours on end so I could resist its magic.”

  “You were tortured,” Jimmy muttered under his breath. He let out a slow, deep exhale. “Good God, Colt.”

  Tortured. Huh. I’d never used that word before to describe what I’d gone through. The general had called it “training,” but now that felt naive.

  “Call it whatever you want, I guess.” I leaned closer, enough to smell the expensive cologne he liked to wear. “I’m not telling you this to get your pity. I’m telling you how I could become a traitor. It’s not like they did right by me, Jimmy. And at any rate, I’m ready to follow someone I really believe in.”

  Jimmy looked at me long and hard, and then, with two fingers, scooted back the cuff of his shirt to reveal his wristwatch. “Then you better chase yourself.”

  The skin on the back of my neck prickled. Should’ve figured he’d already called for backup. “How long do I have?”

  “A minute. Maybe two.”

  I slipped off the barstool before Jimmy had even finished talking. Snaking through the tables, I ducked out of the speakeasy and into the back alley behind the automobile warehouse owned by White Motor Company. The place smelled of copper and oil, and it seeped through the brick walls into the surrounding dark streets.

  As I turned the corner, I nearly poked my eye out on a long pistol muzzle.

  Rubbing my cheek where the metal had hit, I stepped back to find three suits holding their BOI-issued guns at me.

  With an inward groan, I raised my hands.

  …

  I spat on the floor. It was a gross mixture of blood and spit, and I hoped to God not a tooth. I ran my tongue along my upper right molars and felt them all intact then let out a relieved sigh.

  Above me towered a hunter who seldom did hunting. He was more the muscle. Our ace-in-the-hole in field work. It wasn’t that he couldn’t hunt well, or be the gumshoe you needed to be as an agent, but he was too conspicuous. People would remember a man almost seven feet tall with hands the size of trash can lids and the color of dark red clay.

  Norman Rodgers was a golem. They were rare, mostly because the skin of a golem was incredibly hard to surgically place and grow. Only people with a lot of…body landscape could adjust to new skin literally made of clay—hence the monstrous size of golems.

  Usually his punches were like wrecking balls, but at this point they were starting to feel more like gnats. After almost a week at the special BOI holding prison in DC, I was beginning to crumble. Mentally and emotionally. Physically, I felt okay, as good as I could feel getting beat up every other hour under their so-called “interrogation.”

  It was my worries over Eris that was the true torturer. She was in New York with her creator, and God only knew what he was doing to her, or forcing her to do and say.

  I shuddered. Norman cracked his knuckles—crumbling bits of clay flaked off and fluttered to the ground—and grinned. “Ready to give it up yet, Clemmons?”

  “I’ve already given you everything,” I said wearily. “It’s not my fault you assholes don’t believe me.”

  It wasn’t under the pain of interrogation that I’d given it up, either. The minute I stepped inside the BOI office, I’d given them everything. Even the parts I’d left out when talking to McCarney in Sister Adaline’s office. The story about Eris and how she wasn’t evil, and then about BKH and the other monsters after her, even about Madame Maldu being missing in New York, and then finally the mysterious virus that Gin and her goons had been working on.

  McCarney had glared at me from across a silver table like I was a criminal—no, worse than that. A traitor.

  I tried not to care, but after years of doing anything to win this man’s approval, I still did somehow.

  After talking till my throat was raw, McCarney had stood, tapped the spine of the file folder on the table, and said, “We’ll look into it.”

&nb
sp; That was six days ago, and what had followed were sleepless nights, crap meals, and Norman using me as a punching bag. It was all clearly revenge for thinking I could turn my back on them without consequences.

  My eyes and chest burned with the helplessness of it all. Maybe I should’ve gone to New York alone and taken my chances in rescuing her. Maybe they were figuring out ways to find her and take her out instead. If she was in the hands of anyone who wasn’t the US government, then she was a weapon ready to terrorize the country. Had I condemned her to a swifter death?

  The muscles in my stomach and arms seized in agony, and I folded inward, wheezing with something that felt like panic.

  What have I done? What did I expect? That the BOI would actually take a traitor’s word and help me rescue the girl I love?

  Yes, love. After over a week of being away from her, worrying about her constantly, picturing her smile, and wishing I could hold her in my arms again, I was ready to admit it.

  The creak of a door parted the storm of thoughts spinning through my head. I lifted my chin and blinked through a black eye.

  Jimmy Sawyer sauntered into the stark white room and nodded to Norman. “How’s he holding up?”

  Norman smiled, rolling down his sleeves to cover his clay arms. “He’ll break soon.”

  If I haven’t already.

  Jimmy nodded. “Good. Well, McCarney’s ordered me to take him back to his cell. Some of the big wigs are coming tonight and they wanna ask him some more questions.”

  Norman shrugged. “I think we’re done here anyway. You need help?”

  The basilisk sneered. “I think I can handle a broken monster.”

  Chuckling, Norman left, dusting off his hands, leaving a trail of dirt in his wake.

  I tilted my head back to stretch my neck and aching shoulders and sighed. I had nothing to say to Jimmy Sawyer. For a minute there, I felt like he was finally beginning to see me for who I was. And see the BOI for what it was. Greedy. Not perfect. Human.

  Then I felt the ropes binding my wrists slacken as Jimmy cut through them. He tossed me a black hood and a pair of cuffs. “Here. Put those on.”

  Dumbfounded, I stared at him as he crossed to the door and looked out the window.